


These Groves Your Kingdom

by cosmic_llin



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Duty, Escape, F/F, Fate & Destiny, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24944887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/pseuds/cosmic_llin
Summary: Ada finds an unexpected intruder in her refuge.
Relationships: Ada Cackle & Hecate Hardbroom, Ada Cackle/Hecate Hardbroom
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34
Collections: The Hackle Summer Trope Challenge





	These Groves Your Kingdom

Some days Ada wondered if it would have been better to have never come back. To just keep running until she escaped the pull of this place. This place that had turned her sister against her, narrowed her own future into a single-step path.

Today was fast turning into one of those days.

She’d had another argument with her mother. The content was subtly different each time but the substance was always the same – Alma Cackle wanted to pass on the school to a perfect copy of herself who would do everything precisely the way she always had. 

Ada wanted to try new things. It had been hard enough persuading her mother to let her do her training elsewhere and spend a few years gaining experience, but once she’d agreed, Ada had hoped that distance and time would help Alma to respect her as an individual with her own approach once she returned.

No such luck so far.

Instead of fleeing the castle or screaming from the top of a tower, she walked away from the breaktime crowds and turned down a quiet corridor, where a muttered spell and a sharp gesture opened her way to a haven of green light.

She ducked inside, let the portal close behind her, closed her eyes and took in a deep breath of the mossy forest scents. The ground was soft under her feet, and in the distance she could hear a stream making its way downhill. Somewhere a bird sang.

This slice of primeval forest wasn’t exactly beneath or behind the castle – it was more like it was separated from it by a fine curtain. On one side, the castle had been built and had stood for hundreds of years. On the other, there had never been anything but forest. Ada had found it when she was twelve and it had always been where she’d gone to retreat from the world.

She walked now, feeling her heartbeat slow, dappled sunlight warming her skin. She became conscious of her shoulders around her ears, and lowered them gradually, letting her muscles relax.

_Ah_ , that was better.

She walked around a sturdy oak – and jumped when someone was sitting on the other side of it.

Miss Hardbroom let out an honest-to-goodness _shriek_ , and dropped her book as she scrambled to her feet.

‘Miss Cackle…’ she said. ‘I…’

She seemed momentarily lost for words. Ada wasn’t much better off.

‘Miss Hardbroom…’ she said, trying not to sound as irritated as she was. She rather liked Miss Hardbroom, for all she was a bit odd, and they’d occasionally done their marking together in companionable silence. But to find her unexpectedly in this secret sanctuary… 

They stared awkwardly at each other for a few moments before Ada remembered her manners and her duty.

‘I’m so sorry, Miss Hardbroom,’ she said. ‘I was just startled to see you. I didn’t realise anyone else came here. Most people don’t know it exists.’ 

She managed to stop herself from saying _most people who aren’t Cackles and who don’t have a birthright to it_. It was too late to do anything about it now.

‘Miss Cackle, I’m the one who should apologise,’ said Miss Hardbroom. ‘I should have… I’ll leave. Please, pretend I was never here. I’ll take care not to come back.’

Part of Ada, still full of burning fury after her argument with her mother, would have liked to leave it at that. Watch Miss Hardbroom leave, take back her refuge for herself. Didn’t she deserve just one tiny bit of this place where she wasn’t beholden to what other people expected of her? 

‘Don’t go,’ she said, instead.

_You’re too soft, Ada_ , she told herself, but she smiled at Miss Hardbroom anyway.

‘... are you sure?’

‘There’s plenty of space for both of us,’ Ada said, gesturing at the forest around them.

‘There certainly is,’ agreed Miss Hardbroom.

Curiosity overcame crossness. ‘How did you get in here?’ Ada asked. ‘It’s very well hidden.’

‘You may not know that I spent most of my holidays in the castle, when I was a student,’ Miss Hardbroom said, kneeling down to pick up her book. ‘Given enough time to explore, I imagine anyone would find most of the corners.’

Ada hadn’t known that. She _had_ known that Miss Hardbroom never left the castle and grounds, not even over the summer, because the other teachers had whispered as much. What she didn’t know was why, and she doubted asking would go well.

‘Do you like it here?’ she asked instead.

‘Here, at the academy, or here, in this forest?’

‘The academy. I’d already assumed you liked the forest.’

A ghost of a smile danced on Miss Hardbroom’s lips. ‘There’s nowhere else I would want to be,’ she said.

For some reason, that was what brought tears of anger springing back to Ada’s eyes. She blinked them back, but Miss Hardbroom frowned at her with concern, and that brought them forth again, and she had to dab at her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse.

Miss Hardbroom, looking faintly appalled, offered her a grey handkerchief.

_Nowhere else I would want to be_. 

Ada thought of all the other places she wanted to be right now. The schools in Cornwall and Shropshire and Northumbria where she had taught, the college in East Anglia where she had done her training, cities where she had travelled in the holidays – Tokyo, Vienna, Rio. She thought of the girlfriend who hadn’t been willing to move here with her, the colleagues who still mirrored or wrote now and then but whose lives were no longer tangled with her own, the friends she’d lived with in college who she almost never heard from any more.

Her life had always been leading here. It had always had to end. Anyway, this was what she _wanted_.

‘It’ll be all right...’ said Miss Hardbroom, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder.

‘I just…’ Ada said, feeling she owed her some sort of explanation. ‘I just sometimes… feel so trapped here.’

Miss Hardbroom nodded. ‘I can understand that,’ she said.

Ada dried her eyes with Miss Hardbroom’s handkerchief. ‘Not all the time.’ she said. ‘It was my decision to come back, mostly. It’s… been a bit of an adjustment, that’s all. I’m sorry. You probably came here for some peace and quiet and here I am boring you with my problems.’

‘Not at all,’ said Miss Hardbroom.

A chaffinch hopped past, and the two of them watched it for a few moments. Miss Hardbroom pretended not to pay any attention to Ada while she pulled herself together.

‘This forest,’ said Ada at last. ‘I think it must be what would have been here, if the castle had never been built.’

‘I’d guessed that might be the case too,’ said Miss Hardbroom.

Perhaps that was why it was such a comforting place to be. No Academy. No centuries-long legacy. Somewhere she could be Ada, instead of the latest in a long line of Cackles. But then, if the castle had never been built, would it really have stayed like this? Without the Cackle lands stretching for miles around, would this forest be a town by now, or a motorway, or a farm?

Ada decided not to think about it too hard. After all, it was here now and that was the main thing.

‘I was going to go to the stream,’ she said instead. ‘Would you like to join me?’

‘I’d like that,’ said Miss Hardbroom. ‘If I wouldn’t be intruding?’

‘Not at all,’ said Ada, and this time she couldn’t blame it on being too soft. Something about Miss Hardbroom being here just felt right. 

They followed the sound of water down to the stream.


End file.
